Booger Brothers Broadcasting System

Almost everyone knows what a Les Paul guitar is, but history seem to be forgetting Les Paul the person. Firstly, his real name was Lester William Polsfuss, He never legally changed his name. Les Paul was a stage name he started using in the mid-1930s. It wasn't even his first stage name. Paul didn't start buildings guitars until the 1940s. Before his guitar era he was a radio performer, a recording engineer, a music director and for a time ...a pirate radio operator. Whole books have been written about the mans many storied accomplishments but I'd like to focus on radio and one pirate station in particular. More here. Paul was a genius engineer his ability to build a transmitter, or even an entire radio station is not in doubt —only the details around this particular tale.

The story is fabulous, who doesn't like a tale mixing wild house parties with pirate radio and hot jazz.  But it's main problem is that his biographies skip over it. The biographical reference is admittedly brief. It appears in his 1993 biography Les Paul: An American Original, by Mary Alice Shaughnessy. Les Paul was still alive when it was published, he died in 2009. That overlap also gives it more credence, but contemporary references were hard to find.

So let's start with his early radio experiences. He received some engineering training as early as 8 years old by an unnamed engineer from WTMJ. He became a musician as a teenager. He played with Rube Tronson's Texas Cowboys, and played with Sunny Joe Wolverton's Radio Band in St. Louis, MO, on KMOX. The book The Mighty 'MOX by Sally and Rob Rains identifies corroborates that early KMOX program. It is otherwise very obscure.

A young guitar player known as "Rhubarb Red" was part of The International Oil Burner Show between 4:30 and 7 AM from 1927 to 1930."

Les relocated with Joe Wolverton's band to Chicago and started playing on WBBM with them, and then solo as Rhubarb Red. He was performing as both a country artist and a jazz solist. As Red he started recording with Art Tatum which is when his career really took off. The book Famous Wisconsin Musicians by Susan Masino also has him performing at WISN in Milwaukee, WRJN in Racine, and both KBGA and KWTO in Springfield, IL and of course WJJD and WIND in Chicago. This is further referenced in the book Encyclopedia of American Radio 1920 - 1960 by Luther Sies

"Rhubarb Red. A CW tenor, guitarist and harmonica player, Rhubarb Red appeared daily at 6:30 A.M. and again at 9:00 AM. in an all request program WJJD, Chicago, IL; and WIND, Gary, IN, 1935-1937."

That same book has Les relocating to New York in 1937. The official Les Paul website puts it in 1938, but close enough. But 1938 is definitely when he began performing with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians on NBC radio.  In 1941 He returns to Chicago and becomes the music director for radio stations WJJD and WIND. So from his career history we can say definitively that his pirate station existed for a period of time between 1938 and 1941.

Here we have the pirate station boxed in my context. As the legend goes... in Jackson Heights, NY, Les created his own local radio station and broadcast jam sessions. His makeshift studio full of professional musicians. The station operated at low wattage and was only receivable locally, but due to the proximity of LaGuardia airport that included aircraft. Yes, the claim is that the airplanes flying into LGA would get scrambled signals of jazz music mixing with coordinates from the tower. Purportedly he solved that engineering problem with a "wave trap."

How much of that is true? Well, Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the Queens in New York City. Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford had an apartment in 40-15 81 St. That address is only about 2 miles from LGA. Most sources describe that as a studio apartment. But Les Paul in an interview said "Getting union cards jumped our pay to $150 a week and allowed us to take furnished apartments at Electra Court." Advertisements for the units described it as "The House of to-morrow, ready to-day!" The developers ran ads for furnished apartments in Down Beat magazine, specifically advertising to musicians —just as Les described. So here was have a plausible reason he had such access to professional musicians; his building was full of them!

Different versions of the tale claim that he set up his studio in the building’s basement, near the furnace room. His friends came over and they played together. But his friends at the time are now enormously famous musicians: band members from the biggest big bands of the era. Not the band leaders but the working union card musicians from Benny Goodman's band, Glenn Miller’s band, Artie Shaw's band, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey's bands, Fred Waring’s band, Bob Crosby’s band and Lionel Hampton's band. It's almost too fantastical to be real. How many of them lived at Electra Court?

I did eventually find a contemporary reference in the July 1940 issue of Popular Mechanics. I think that's Ernie Newton on bass which might make that band some iteration of the Les Paul trio. Did the FCC pay him a visit? Did he really take the  mic and announce the station name as "Booger Brothers Broadcasting?"

The Popular Mechanics article is missing the "Booger Brothers" connection but everything else is there. The general location, the famous musicians, and the broadcasting equipment stretching from the apartment to the basement. A 1953 issue of the Atkinson's Evening Post claims that Les gave the station ID as "The Booger Brothers, The Pink and Yellow network, top of your dial."  But Les went on to say "It was a good station... but the law would have caught up with us if an accident hadn't beat it to the punch." What accident? The Booger Brothers came to an abrupt end in 1941. While jamming in his apartment basement in 1941, Paul was nearly electrocuted to death. [SOURCE]

Paul describes it himself in the book The Early Years of the Les Paul Legacy, 1915-1963 by Robb Lawrence. "I stuck my hand in the transmitter when I shouldn't have..." Bassist Ernie Newton knocked him free but he was seriously injured. After an ice bath they took Paul to the hospital. It took him two years to recuperate according to some sources. This is not entirely true but Booger Brothers was still off the air.

In 1941 or 1942 he moved to Chicago where he became the music director for radio stations WJJD and WIND. A promotional photo dated October of 1941 puts him in the Chicago CBS studio. Newspaper radio schedules still show his trio playing on local stations: they were as on air at KLZ and KVOR in May of 1942. A November schedule has him on WEOA, WCKY, WGAR, WHIO, and KMOX at different times. Some biographies have him moving to "Hollywood" in 1943. That's partly true. The only radio he did after that was for the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) because he got drafted. Though he did do some films. The Bing Crosby radio show that gets connected to this move was Kraft Music Hall and he didn't appear on that program until 1945. He got his own eponymous radio show in 1950. It was a 15-minute slot on NBC with his trio now composed of himself, Mary Ford, and rhythm player Eddie Stapleton. His career never stopped but I think that's the last major radio milestone on that long and storied career I mentioned.

Mac Odell the WLAC Dream Interpreter

Odell McLeod was known by his stage name Mac Odell. He was a country and gospel singer who wrote a number of tunes performed by the Stanley Brothers, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, and Flatt & Scruggs to name a few. But he was also a frequent radio performer. He sold song books, harmonicas, and even live baby chicks. He also was a radio "Dream Interpreter." (see above) Nobody does that anymore either.

Born in 1916 in Roanoke, Alabama, Mac first played on the radio as "Harmonica Mac" at the age of 12. According to a biography in Bluegrass Unlimited he later added mandolin, guitar, banjo, piano, and vocals to his act. But that would have been in 1928.  There is one AM station local to Roanoke but WELR-AM didn't sign on until 1952. Back in 1928, the whole state of Alabama only had 5 radio stations: WAPI, WBRD, WKBC, WJBY, and WIBZ. It is not recorded where his debut occurred but I favor WKBC. Regardless by 1934 he was performing on WWL-AM in New Orleans with Slim Bassett as Mac & Slim. More here.


After Odell  married Addie Wood in 1940 they became a husband and wife team "Mac and Little Addie." They were played for Suppertime Frolic show on WJJD-AM until the start of World War II. During the war, McLeod was a factory worker, btu continued songwriting. After the end of the war in 1948, they went to Nashville and began performing at 1510 WLAC-AM  still under the brand Mac and Little Addie. Some sources describe him as leaving the station in 1952, but he was still using the callsign in his advertisements as late as 1959. This includes a classified ad  in the February 1959 issue of Popular Mechanics offering to write songs to peoples poems. Odell was on Mercury Records label from 1949 until 1952, leaving then to join King Records, where he cut a few more sides.

 In 1957 (or 1959) McLeod moved to Benton Harbor, MI where he ran a signage business. In the late 1970s, he began songwriting again and wrote and recorded for the label Folk Variety in Germany. In the 1980s he was sort of rediscovered and with Addie he traveled to the Netherlands for a gospel tour. He died in 2003.

The First Black Radio Announcer (Part 6)

Charles Walton called Al Benson the Godfather of Black Radio.He was a DJ (obviously) a musician and recording artist, a record producer an ordained minister, and a civil rights activist. Born in Jackson,  Missisippi, Benson worked vaudeville as a child and relocated to Chicago with his parents in 1923. He was only 15 years old. The success of Jack L Cooper on WSBC opened the door to some possibilities in Chicago and Benson walked through it.

The Chicago Tribute wrote that he "worked as a probation officer, railroad cook and precinct captain..." He went on to found a small church under his real name Arthur Leaner. Then in 1943 he began to broadcast his church services, sermons and gospel music on 1390 WGES-AM Sunday nights. The station signed on in 1925 as WTAY-AM and in the 1920s was a 3-way dayshare with WSBT and WJKS. In 1925 Coyne Electrical School purchased the station changed its call letters to WGES. It changed hands a coupel more times and in 1941 WGES left the share and moved to 1390 kHz and increased it's power from 500 watts power to 5,000 watts. By 1945 Benson also had another program spinning blues and jump music.

Benson introduced his show with the song  "9 O'clock Beer" by the Barney Bigard Quintet. He would stay with WGES until 1962 when it flipped to Top-40 as WYNR. The new owrner, Gordon McLendon fired all of its foreign language programmers and black DJs... including Benson. (It failed and went all-news in 1964)
 Benson was popular in Chicago. He cross the street and began DJing at WJJD. But the uproar over WGES continued. There were complaints the the FCC. There was a big polish population in Chicago that just got the palm.  The FCC held hearings.. but nada.

Benson cross the street to WHFC-AM and when the station was bought by Leonard Chess it was a dream come true. Under Leonard the station became a 24/7 black radio station as WVON. But he worked only a month more and announced his retirement in 1963. He did a couple part time gigs at WAIT, WWCA and WIMS. He died in 1978.

Suppertime Frolic

In 1940 they advertised 1130 WJJD-AM as "The Largest Independent radio Station in the Nation."It was probably even true at 20,000 watts over Chicago. Some announcers left WLW for slots at WJJD. They claimed the radio station was founded by the Loyal Order of Moose.. that might have been true as well. They did a lot of public service programming which was important to their image.. Unsurprisingly their sports programming was wildly more popular. But what has proved the most enduring was the Suppertime Frolic.

Billboard dismissed the program as "...a popular program for rural consumption, patched up to sell a number of products, most of them patent medicines." Ouch. It had been founded by A&R man Ken Nelson later famously of Capitol records. Early on it was hosted by announcer and emcee Uncle Ervin Viktor, the program was panned by city press.
The program aired Monday through Saturday from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM.

In 1935 DJ Randy Blake (aka Harold Weinstein) joined the program as a sacred singer. He had previously been at WBBM and felt the pull of hillbilly music. By 1941 he was officially it's host. The program went on to have the Kasapar Sisters, Patsy Montana, Red Foley, Lonnie Glosson, the Cumberland Ridge Runners, Jimmy Dale, Les Paul (as Rhubarb Red), The Kentucky Mountaineers, Bob Atcher and Bonnie Blue Eyes and others as entertainers.  Randy didn't leave the program until 1957, when he moved to WLW. excepting a short stretch in 1948 when he served in WWII, he hosted the program for 22 years.

But after WWII most of the live talent was gone. Randy just play3ed Country Western Disc Jockey. So it was no surprise when Blake took the program with him to WLW and moved it's time slot to 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM, Tuesday through Sunday. The days changed, but the program got shorter. The name quickly changed to "The Randy Blake Show." I get the impression it didn't last long.

DJ Doc Hopkins

Born in 1900 (or maybe 1894, 1899, or 1901), Howard "Doc" Hopkins was a barber, a musician, a machinist and disk jockey. His career peaked in the 1930s and 1940s singing and playing banjo on both the WLS National Barn Dance with the Prairie Ramblers while also appearing on the WJJD Supper Time Frolic program. He appears in both the canonical  The Encyclopedia of Country Music and it's predecessor, the  History and Encyclopedia of Country Western, and Gospel Music.  The latter edition only notes his time on WJJD and WLS, but his radio resume is much longer indeed. Having also played with the Cumberland Ridge Runners, the UCLA Folk Festival in the early 1960s and even founded his own record label, DH in 1948 you might guess he got around.  More here.

The Encyclopedia of Country Music called him a "smooth-voiced balladeer with a storehouse of traditional material." He formed his first professional band in 1929 in Mount Vernon along with Karl Davis and Hartford Taylor. By 1943 he was playing the Smile-A-While program with the Prairie ramblers, a 30 minute slot on WLS-AM. In the book Smile when You Call Me a Hillbilly author Jeffrey Lange even goes as far as to credit the popularization of the mandolin as a country music instrument to Hopkins bands. Strangely  this popularity on air didn't translate to record sales. He cut a few sides for Broadcay Records in 1931, Then a couple for The American Recording Co in 1936 with the Carolina ridge Runners. In 1941 Decca tried and failed as well.

With the Krazy Kats he spent a year playing a regular spot on WHAS-AM in Louisville, KY. He relocated at the end of 1930 to Chicago and joined the Cumberland Ridge Runners and played regularly on the WLS-AM National Barn Dance. In 1935 he reappeared on WJJD's Suppertime Frolic. In 1942 he returned to WLS-AM.  In 1949 he quit the record biz and became a machinist again. In 1955 Billboard Magazine announced his return and the following year published a note that Alma records would be releasing a few sides of his Sacred recordings. In the 1960s with credit to the UCLA folk festivals he cut his first and only LP. He died in 1988. He might have been as old as 94 or as young as 87... nobody knows.

Art Hellyer is Not Dead

Art Hellyer, said in a 1993 interview on 97.1 WNIB that he wasn't really a DJ he just "played music as a fill between commercials." Hellyer was a mainstay of Chicagoland radio starting back in the 1940s and lasting for five decades. His zany off-beat humor was part of what shaped our modern radio gestalt bridging the gap between guy s like J. Aku Head Pupule and the modern morning zoo. He was on air at WGN, WJOL, WLS, WMAQ, WJJD, WOPA, WIND, WAIT, WOWO, WCFL, WBBM and certainly others. His biography The Hellyer Say is not to be skipped. 

His first show was on WKNA in Charleston, WV in 1947 interviewing auto salesmen.  Despite behaving like Art Hellyer, he was not fired from that job. (In his book he actually devotes a whole chapter to what he was not fired for.) It was a theme in his career. His zany behavior got him ratings. WBBM famously fired him over a dress-code violation and then re-hired him. As he told the Chicago Tribune in 1996 more simply that he got fired "a lot."

"...I counted 14 times. It may have been more than that... I always said every one of my battles was over creative control. I wanted to be creative, and they wanted control."

It's hard to say which of his programs was the most important to his career as several of them held the number one slot in one decade or another. In the 1950s his program The Art Hellyer Show aka the Morning Madcap on 1000 WCFL-AM, again on 780 WBBM with his Supper Club shows in the '60s while also doing mornings at WAIT, Then again on WLS-FM in the '70s until they went progressive rock in 1969. He was number one again on 1160 WJJD-AM in the '80s. His time at WOPA straddles some of that doing WOPA Art Hellyer's Memory Lane in the mid sixties.

What probably got his career going the most was his time on on WCFL. There he was given carte blanche for the first time in his career and he more or less ran amok. He offended big sponsors, like Coca-Cola and General Motors but the listeners loved it.  In he did spend a few serious on air. He advocated for the seat belts in cars in the 1950s and in 1960 spent time explaining to listeners the importance of the then brand new Polio vaccine to quiet the anti-vaccination nuttters. In 2011 he made another come back of sorts and began Internet radio station Party 934. Not bad for a guy that one quipped that "...the average life of a disc jockey in Chicago is three years."

The Midnight Frolic

In the late 1920s, the Commercial Appeal newspaper ran WMC-AM. The Midnight Frolic was a late night jazz program on WMC in Memphis that was an all-request show that supposedly was broadcast from the actual roof of the Commercial appeal building.

790 WMC-AM first began broadcasting on January 19, 1923. A review of a Bessie Smith program there dates the program to at least that year. It clearly describes the program as starting at 11:00 PM and airing from the rooftop of the Commercial Appeal Building. My latest confirmed reference to it's Midnight Folic is in 1925 but it probably dates to earlier. The Book Jack Teagarden: the Story of a Jazz Maverick refers to the show:

"The Peacocks broadcast frequently on The Midnight Frolic Show over WMC The Commercial Appeal radio station. The following item from The Appeal  gives an indication of how dependent these bands were on listener requests.  'Tonight they will start their programme with a medley air.  the entire list of numbers has not yet been selected... it is hoped that there will be enough requests made to carry on through the hour..."

The band (The Youngberg-Marin Peacocks) played a couple numbers they planned on then apparently requests carried them through the rest of the live program. The Peacocks had 10 members and were able to play 25 different instruments among them... just not simultaneously. Bessie smith cplayed with a orchestra as well but the number of musicians is less than certain.

If you start to read about this, you'll find there was an unrelated program of the same name on KMCS-AM in Inglewood, CA, and one on WDAF-AM, and another on KFI-AM in Los Angeles.WHO-AM had a Barn Dance Frolic back in 1932. 1160 WJJD-AM in Chicago had both a Breakfast Frolic and a Suppertime Frolic program.  But there's a reason for all that. During that ugly separate-but-equal era many shows were divided by race into two very separate evening programs. Today that's an indication that the earlier program is the family-friendly program. The notion came from cabaret and it's at least a hundred years old, and the trail of etymology loses me there.

But it stands to reason this is something that radio inherited from vaudeville. Commercial radio was born in the 1920s and it took it's ideas for entertainment directly from the stage. In Birmingham There was a theater called "The Frolic Theater" where Bessie Smith also performed. In New York City the New Amsterdam theatre was called The Frolic as well.  I'll quote from Virtual 42nd street.

"When it was built, the New Amsterdam was the largest theatre in New York, and could seat 1800 people.  It opened in November of 1903... In 1914, the rooftop theatre was renamed Danse de Follies and  Ziegfeld added a dance floor on the rooftop.  Later, in 1923, the rooftop would be renamed again, to the Frolic Theatre."

Notice that program is also broadcast from the roof of the building.  Each of these programs at WMC, KFI, WDAF, KMCS and others probably has a connection to local theaters, and local theatre troops.

DJ Les Paul

Les Paul was a gearhead. It's more common to think of his as a guitarist now, but in his heyday, he was a gearhead tried and true. it's a term we often don't use now as the technically includes are off writing computer code and not handing hardware with any actual gears. He was born Lester William Polfuss at Waukesha, WI in 1915. He became a teenager during the rise of radio. that's just about perfect timing for a gearhead.

But since you all know him as a guitarist.. i'll start there and segue awkwardly. He started on banjo but quickly moved to guitar. It's no surprise to anyone that he was a prodigy. he was playing semi-professionally at the age of 13. a local drive-in restaurant at the age of 13. It was as a guitarist that his gearhead inclinations became more pronounced. He wanted his guitar louder. Using a phonograph needle wire and a radio speaker he did it. It was the beginning of the electric guitar. This you should already know. there are other claimants. They are just jealous currs.

He dropped out of high school. He started playing with country & western bands and they played on radio stations throughout the midwest including WHAD-AM in Milwaukee, and WRJN-AM in Racine. He played unnamed station in Appleton, Iron Mountain, etc. The WLS Barndance in Waukesha, WISN-AM in Milwaukee, KBGA-AM and KWTO-AM in Springfield, IL.

In 1931 he met Sunny Joe Wolverton who got him a gig in Rube Tronsons Texas Cowboys. Then he got a gig on the "Farm Folks Hour" on KMOX-AM in St. Louis. In Chicago he began playing under the name Rhubarb Red on account of his red hair. In Chicago they played on WIND-AM and WJJD-AM. He was offered a steady gig at WBBM-AM still as Rhubarb Red but now with the Ozark Appleknockers.

In Chicago he formed the first of the Les Paul trios. They moved to New York where they were discovered by Fred Waring of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. They toured together. It gave Les actual connections but Waring and Paul fell out a bit over all the attention that exotic electric guitar got. Les went back to Chicago to MD at WBBM but the office didn't suit him. he moved to the Ben Bernie Orchestra.

During the war Les was recruited into the Armed Forces Radio Service where he made trascription recordings. Even after he was discharged he continued to make AFRS recordings through C.P. MacGregor. After the war he the Les Paul Show debuted on NBC. It was a 15 minute program featuring himself Mary Ford and Eddie Stapleton. I wont rehash all that. I'll let Easy Ace do what it does best. He's got some Les Paul programs from the 1950s posted here.